How to cook with flowers

Bringing flowers into the kitchen – in a recipe, not a vase – is a way to add a touch of flavour, as well as a feast for your eyes. Cassie Winslow loves flowers – “they are so magical and special. They’re just a wonderful part of our world” – and has been using them as an ingredient for around a decade. The trend for edible flowers has been blooming for several years but, for many of us, the idea of munching petals, instead of admiring them, is still a leap. Winslow’s new book, Floral Provisions, guides you through the edible flower garden. “If you love flowers, it’s just another way to incorporate them into your life,” she says. Here’s her advice on how to do it. Know your edibles

Just as you wouldn’t go grazing on any old leaf instead of lettuce, some flowers are very much inedible. Blame Instagram, which has hot-housed the edible flower trend, for promoting toxic, or even potentially lethal, flowers – such as rhododendron – shown adorning smoothies and puddings. Edible flowers include lavender, roses, hollyhocks, pelargoniums, nasturtiums and pansies. Some look similar – jasmine is fine, but false jasmine is poisonous; you can eat the flowers of garden peas, but not sweet peas. Anyone allergic to pollen should steer clear of them all.

Grow your own

Winslow grows a range of edible flowers but if you don’t have a garden, many edibles, such as pansies and violas, can be grown in window boxes. If you already have a vegetable patch or grow herbs, look out for the flowers they produce, such as chives and mint; vegetables, such as kale, produce flowers once they have bolted, the stage before going to seed. It is essential, says Winslow, not to use pesticides or other chemicals on flowers you are growing to eat. And don’t consume cut flowers, or flowers from plants from garden centres (or go with the Royal Horticultural Society’s advice and grow them on for at least three months, to reduce the impact of any chemical residue), as they will almost certainly have been treated. If you are foraging, the usual rules apply: identify what you are picking, don’t take too much and be wary of where you pick from; avoid roadsides, places likely to have been treated with pesticides and herbicides and areas frequented by animals.

Buy edible flowers

A large number of online suppliers sell fresh and dried flowers, and some supermarkets stock them. Winslow likes farmers’ markets and health food stores, where she has found more unusual flowers such as rosemary or broccoli flowers, saying: “There are so many different options now.” You can use the dried flowers sold as herbal tea – just about every supermarket stocks camomile tea (just cut open the teabags) and you may find others such as hibiscus, jasmine and rose.

A pinch of salt

Winslow’s camomile and rose salts are an easy way to incorporate flowers into everyday cooking. Mix 5g of dried flowers (crushed to small flakes, but not into powder) with 100g of fine sea salt. Ideally, leave it for a week to let the flavour steep, but you can use it straight away. She uses both in everyday cooking. Camomile salt – it has a honeyed, herbaceous flavour, she says – goes on eggs, potatoes, and serves as a seasoning for chicken and pasta dishes. She keeps a pot of rose salt on her counter and it is used “in soups, on french fries, sprinkled on top of poached eggs, on top of chocolate chip cookies or chocolate ice-cream”. It doesn’t make everything taste of rose, she says, adding: “It’s very subtle and there’s a visual component that is really lovely.” Both salts are good on the rim of a cocktail glass, she says.

Keep it sweet

Another pantry staple is sugars and syrups made from edible flowers for use in baking, says Winslow. Fresh flowers can add too much moisture to salts and sugars, making them clumpy, so are better for syrups. Her “garden party sugar” recipe is “like nature’s confetti”, and is easy to make: mix a tablespoon each of hibiscus, camomile, lavender, rose and calendula with 200g cane sugar. Use it in cakes and biscuits, as you would ordinary sugar – Winslow recommends it to prettify pancakes. To make lavender syrup, which Winslow likes to drizzle over ice-cream or cakes, as well as in cocktails and iced coffee, stir 200g granulated sugar, 10g lavender and 120ml filtered water over a medium heat until dissolved. Cook for another five minutes or so until it has thickened, then leave to cool, and strain with a sieve. She also recommends infusing honey with dried flowers.

Taste it first

Too much flower power can be overwhelming and even cloying, so it’s worth doing a taste test to check the strength – dried flowers are usually stronger than fresh, but the taste can vary between producers and batches. The idea, says Winslow, isn’t to make everything taste of lavender or roses (unless you want it to), but to add a subtle extra dimension. For instance, the first time she added camomile salt to scrambled eggs, her husband said how good it was, but he couldn’t tell it was camomile. “It’s not overpowering like, ‘These are camomile eggs, this is weird’. It’s just a subtle flavour that is different to what you are used to.”

Progress beyond puddings

While flowers work particularly well in drinks and desserts, Winslow likes to add them to savoury dishes. They can be baked into pizza dough and flatbread, and she makes cheese crackers flavoured with three tablespoons of dried calendula and a teaspoon of rose salt. “You see these beautiful little petals that are cooked in the crackers, and there’s a little spiciness that comes with the calendula.” Calendula is also added to a Gouda and bacon quiche. “Nasturtium is kind of spicy, so I like using it in savoury dishes,” she says. “It can be really good in salads, or pressed into crepes.” Mix fresh flowers into soft cheese or butter for pretty sandwiches, or to spread on toast.